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The God Complex (TV story)
The God Complex 'is the eleventh episode of the sixth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Toby Whithouse, directed by Nick Hurran and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. Overview To be added Synopsis The TARDIS is pulled off-course and arrives in a strange twisting hotel with a seemingly endless series of halls and numbered doors down every corridor. The Doctor, Amy and Rory encounter a group of people from different backgrounds all transported into the hotel who explain that every door contains the worst fears of whoever finds their room. In amongst the mass of halls, the Doctor finds out that amongst all of the fears in the rooms, there is a monster seeking out whoever suddenly starts preying to it and feast on them... and he's just given it what it wants. Plot An old 1980s Earth hotel, a policewoman named Lucy Hayward wanders around the hallways and stumbles across a door that draws her attention and inside finds a gorilla from a children's book that used to terrify her. She writes a note detailing how the sight of her greatest fear began her worship and repeatedly repeats 'Praise Him' when a giant figure emerges from around the corner and charges at her. Sometime later, the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the hotel on their way to Ravenscala and examine various framed photos on the wall of previous occupants of the hotel along with seemingly unconnected tags beneath the names. They head to reception and are met by three others, Rita and Howie, both human and Gibbis, a Tivolian. Taking note of Howie's surprise to be back in reception, he tells them that the architecture of the hotel seems to be constantly changing and the Doctor finds that the doors and windows are just blank walls. Rita also informs them that the rooms are all full of what are only perceived as bad dreams. The Doctor decides to do a planet-wide scan but they return to where they landed the TARDIS to find it gone. Rita takes the Doctor and to the dining room where a fourth occupant, Joe, is tied to a chair to face surrounded by ventriloquist dummies. He appears to be in a state of bliss, voicing a reservation to his death and that of everybody else to serve whatever he has come to worship. He instructs the Doctor to find his room so that he'll understand but he simply picks him up with luggage trolley to take him with them. While wandering the corridors looking for whatever Joe is praising, everybody fails to notice Howie being drawn to a door. Inside the room is a party of young women who make fun of his nerdy demeanour and his stammer. The Doctor slams the door shut and ensures Howie that it's something that easily explained when he starts internally praising whatever the creature is. While Amy picks up Lucy's note, they are alerted by an incoming stomping and retreat into the rooms. Rita and Joe accidentally wander into Rita's room where her father bitterly admonishes her and she starts subconsciously praising the creature as well. The others, meanwhile, stumble into a room with Weeping Angels, but the Doctor finds they are just illusions as the creature passes the room; the Doctor catches a glimpse of it through the door's peephole and sees a Minotaur. It catches a glimpse of them when Joe gets free of his bonds and draws it's attention and it goes after him instead. The Doctor runs off after them but finds Joe dead on the floor, all his vital bodily functions simply ceased. Back in reception, while Rita makes tea, Amy informs Gibbis that she knows about the Angels and promises that the Doctor will get them out alive when Gibbis suggests that if the Angels weren't for her, then her room is still somewhere. Rita and the Doctor talk when Amy remembers Lucy's note and the Doctor reads it through. At the point where he reads the words 'Praise him', Howie suddenly finds himself unable to not say it and everybody gets into a panicked frenzy. Gibbis suggests letting the Minotaur have Howie so it may leave the rest of them alone; the Doctor berates him for considering it. Sitting Howie down when the creature possesses him again. the Doctor questions him and deduces that it feeds on fear and warns everybody not to fall victim to it before making a plan to capture it. Relaying Howie's prayers through the hotel's P.A. system, the Doctor, Amy and Rita lure the Minotaur to a room in the hotel and block the door so the Doctor can talk with it. While he manages to learn that the hotel is a prison for the Minotaur wherein random people are deposited to feed it and it expresses it's wishes for it all to end, Howie manages to convince the weak-willed Gibbis to release him and the Minotaur chases him through the hallways. While the Doctor chases after it, Amy follows and is drawn to a room numbered '7' and looks inside before Rita pulls it shut - too late, however, since Amy had already seen what was inside. The Doctor finds Howie's body as the other's catch up with him and Gibbis tries to excuse himself and tells the others Howie broke free and overpowered him, only to receive a furious glare from the Doctor. Sometime later, Rita asks the Doctor why he thinks it his job to save everyone when he notices the security cameras and disappears to find their control room. After he's gone, Rita openly praises the Minotaur and it senses her prayer from afar. While looking around for it, he finds a door marked '11' and looks inside, discovering what he expected to find in there. Meanwhile, Rita takes herself deep into the hotel so as not to be followed and is spotted by the Doctor on the security feed. He calls the room she's stood beside and begs her to let him find her when he realises she's started praising it. Instead, she pleads with him not to watch whatever the Minotaur does to her, asking him to remember her as she was and allow her to die fearlessly before putting the phone down. The Doctor, Amy and Rory watch the Minotaur advance on her on the monitor before the Doctor turns it off. Shortly afterward when everybody reconvenes, the Doctor realises while looking for a connection between the people who've died that it's not fear that the Minotaur feeds on, but faith. Every time somebody was presented with their most primal fear in their rooms, such as Joe and the dummies, they'd cling to their strongest faith in whatever made them feel safest. The Doctor solemnly realises that the entire time he's been telling people to hold onto whatever makes them feel safe, he's been exposing their faith to the creature; worse still, he realises that it's likely to hunt Amy next as it was her faith in him that drew the TARDIS there in the first place. Amy starts to praise the creature and draws it to them, forcing them to run through the hallways trying to escape it. They attempt to hide in one of the rooms but accidentally end up in Amy's where they find a young Amelia sat looking out at the stars, waiting for the Doctor. While Gibbis and Rory try and keep it out, the Doctor apologises to Amy, saying that he knew that this was always likely to happen and admits that the real reason he took her with him all that time ago was that he wanted someone to adore him in a last bid to break her faith in him and save her. The admission leaves her on the brink of tears but the bid is successful and the Minotaur collapses; with it's food supply severed, it can finally die. As it does so, the hotel facade digitally folds away to reveal the true alien prison floating through space. The Doctor checks the system and finds that the prison got stuck on the setting so the fears of the people that came before them weren't removed from the program when they arrived. As the Minotaur finally dies, the Doctor translates it's final testimony about being an ancient entity soaked in the blood of the innocent but it's final words are the ones that haunt him - "I wasn't talking about myself". They leave in the TARDIS, which had been removed from the program and return Gibbis home before the Doctor lands outside a house on Earth and presents it to Amy and Rory, along with a set of keys for Rory's favourite car. After Rory goes inside, Amy realises that the Doctor is leaving and he explains he's doing so to protect them - after the events of today, he knows that with the way he lives, he's only just managed to stay on the right side of any potentially fatal outcomes but came too close to losing them both in the prison because he had been placed on a pedestal in her eyes that nearly got her killed and has thus decided to let them live in peace and safety before he is left to stand over their graves. He bids Amy a sad goodbye, promising that they will see each other again eventually and disappears into the TARDIS. Rory reemerges just as it leaves and asks where he's gone - Amy meekly tells him that he's saving them. The episode closes on Amy looking up at the sky from a window and a cut to the Doctor standing alone in the TARDIS, looking around the console room, forced to continue his travels by himself... Cast * The Doctor - Matt Smith * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan * Rory - Arthur Darvill * Lucy Hayward - Sarah Quintrell * Rita - Amara Karan * Howie Spragg - Dimitri Leonidas * Joe Buchanan - Daniel Pirrie * Gibbis - David Walliams * P.E. teacher - Dafydd Emyr * The Creature - Spencer Wilding * Rita's father - Rashid Karapiet * Amelia Pond - Caitlin Blackwood * Gorilla - Roger Ennals Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The God Complex'' page on '''Doctor Who Website